Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, totally worn out and screaming,
"WOO HOO, what a ride!"

Friday, February 10, 2012

Giveaway: Tempest by Julie Cross

 I haven't had a contest in a while so let's get started with this one. I'm giving away my gently used ARC (my review) and I'm also cleaning shelves so more giveaways are coming soon!! 

Rules:
- Simply fill out the form below to enter.
-I'm doing this myself so it's international
- Winners chosen by random.org
- Contest ends 2/24/12 at 11:59 p.m. EST

Extra entries:
+1 new follower
+2 old follower
+2 promote - leave link

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Review: Tempest by Julie Cross




 Today Jackson and Holly 
are in love
Tomorrow she will lie dying
in his arms
Yesterday Jackson must 
undo it all





The year is 2009.  Nineteen-year-old Jackson Meyer is a normal guy… he’s in college, has a girlfriend… and he can travel back through time. But it’s not like the movies – nothing changes in the present after his jumps, there’s no space-time continuum issues or broken flux capacitors – it’s just harmless fun.
That is… until the day strangers burst in on Jackson and his girlfriend, Holly, and during a struggle with Jackson, Holly is fatally shot. In his panic, Jackson jumps back two years to 2007, but this is not like his previous time jumps. Now he’s stuck in 2007 and can’t get back to the future.
Desperate to somehow return to 2009 to save Holly but unable to return to his rightful year, Jackson settles into 2007 and learns what he can about his abilities.
But it’s not long before the people who shot Holly in 2009 come looking for Jackson in the past, and these “Enemies of Time” will stop at nothing to recruit this powerful young time-traveler.  Recruit… or kill him.
Piecing together the clues about his father, the Enemies of Time, and himself, Jackson must decide how far he’s willing to go to save Holly… and possibly the entire world.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
Review
This was an interesting take on an old theme. Time travel and romance. Jackson has a secret but it seems that more people know about it than he realized. His jumps to the past are harmless fun and a great source of data for his geek friend Adam who is helping him develop his new talent. But he becomes the hunted and his girlfriend is shot when the Enemies of Time try to recruit him. There is nonstop action and plenty of danger as Jackson desperately tries to change Holly's fate and possibly his own.

I enjoyed the book and the suspense kept me turning the pages. As secrets of the past are revealed more complexities are slowly unveiled. I enjoyed the storyline and this take on time travel. I liked most of the characters, especially the quirky ones. The teenagers were usually believable as teens and age appropriate. They were quite self absorbed in the beginning but the more obstacles they faced the more they changed and matured.

It may be because I'm older and not a teen but there were details that bothered me. I don't want to give anything away so I won't list many specifics. I found some of the actions to be odd and not so believable. These kids have had their lives threatened but security often leaves them alone. Do they really need to go for a walk when their enemy can literally pop up at any time? And later in the story the time travel became confusing because it branched out in so many directions. The loose threads do set up the storyline for the rest of the trilogy though. I am curious to see how they untangle and I look forward to the next book coming in 2013. Overall I found it to be a good start to the series and an easy read by the fireplace.

First in the Tempest trilogy
Bonus short story Tomorrow is Today
www.facebook.com/TempestSeries
www.juliecross.blogspot.com


Thank you to LibraryThing Early Reviewers for an ARC to review.


Publisher: St. Martin's Griffn
Release date: 1/17/12
Pages: 352
Price/format: $17.99/hardcover
Type: YA fantasy

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Teaser Tuesdays


Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme hosted by Miz B of Should Be Reading and asks you to :

1. Grab your current read
2. Open to a random page
3 . Share 2 "teaser" sentences also citing the title of the book and the author and in that way people can have great recommendations if they like the "teaser".
4. Please avoid spoilers!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
If only he'd been there the day of the accident instead of sick at home. Surely he could have done something to help her. At the very least he would have seen the snow and ice accumulating on the road and reminded her to put on her seat belt. How he wished he could go back in time. 
~page 24 
Wonder Struck by Brian Selznick

Monday, February 6, 2012

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday (started at The Printed Page and now a traveling meme) is at the Metroreader this month and is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week (checked out library books don’t count, eBooks & audio books do). Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

Boy am I behind this week! With blogging, reading, housework - you name it I should have done more, but I have been busy helping with the grandkiddos and I'm loving it! The other stuff can wait. Of course that was always my excuse when my own kids were little so maybe I will never get caught up...

I did get a few goodies recently and of course lots of free ebooks.

Cows Can't Quack by Dave Reisman
From author for review








Broken
Scrourge
Ebooks by David H. Burton
Won from The Cheap








The Second Coming
Simian's Lair

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Teaser Tuesday


Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme hosted by Miz B of Should Be Reading and asks you to :
1. Grab your current read
2. Open to a random page
3 . Share 2 "teaser" sentences also citing the title of the book and the author and in that way people can have great recommendations if they like the "teaser".
4. Please avoid spoilers!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I did my teaser a bit differently this week but these were too fun not to share!
 "In 1997, I picked up a discarded grocery list at a St. Louis supermarket. I found it to be a fascinating glimpse into a stranger’s life and decided to pick them up whenever I found one. In 2000, I posted my collection of about 40 lists to the web. By 2004 I had about 500. In early 2006 I started working on a book about these lost lists and by the time it was published in May 2007, there were 1,600 lists on the site (with thousands more yet to be scanned and posted). Now there are more than 3,000.
The book features about 300 of the best: The funniest, the weirdest, the saddest, the strangest, the unhealthiest and more. Simply put, it is a strange, fascinating and hilarious look at other peoples’ discarded grocery lists." ~Bill Keaggy
  Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost And Found by Bill Keaggy
www.milkeggsvodka.com
www.grocerylists.org

Review: Shelter by Harlan Coben






Mickey Bolitar's year 
can't get much worse. 





 

After witnessing his father's death and sending his mom to rehab, he's forced to live with his estranged uncle Myron and switch high schools.
A new school comes with new friends and new enemies, and lucky for Mickey, it also comes with a great new girlfriend, Ashley. For a while, it seems like Mickey's train-wreck of a life is finally improving - until Ashley vanishes without a trace. Unwilling to let another person walk out of his life, Mickey follows Ashley's trail into a seedy underworld that reveals that this seemingly sweet, shy girl isn't who she claimed to be. And neither was Mickey's father. Soon, Mickey learns about a conspiracy so shocking that it makes high school drama seem like a luxury - and leaves him questioning everything about the life he thought he knew.
First introduced to readers in Harlan Coben's latest adult novel, Live Wire, Mickey Bolitar is as quick-witted and clever as his uncle Myron, and eager to go to any length to save the people he cares about. With this new series, Coben introduces an entirely new generation of fans to the masterful plotting and wry humor that have made him an award-winning, internationally bestselling, and beloved author.


Review
I'm a big fan of Harlan Coben's past novels. His books have so much action and suspense they are hard to put down. He is so good at throwing a curve ball in the story too and I always wonder when it's coming. This is his debut into young adult fiction and I was excited to read it. I have to say that I was kind of disappointed though. I thought it was age appropriate but I was expecting it to have the same intensity as Coben's adult novels.

This book was well written and had a good mystery. The characters were interesting at first but they didn't seem to develop much. Some of them had odd behavior too. I liked Mickey but he didn't act like a teenager. He was suppose to be a high school sophomore but he was too mature and too calm under pressure.

The story was interesting enough that I expect to try the next book in the series to see what happens. I am curious about the cliffhangers. If I don't care for that book than I think I will stick with Coben's other novels because I really like this author.

Thank you to LibraryThing Early Reviewers for an ARC to review.

Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
Release date: 9/6/11
Pages: 288
Price/format: $18.99 /hardcover
Type: thriller YA series

Monday, January 23, 2012

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday (started at The Printed Page and now a traveling meme) is at At Home With Books this month and is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week (checked out library books don’t count, eBooks & audio books do). Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

I'm still spending way too much time looking for ebooks but there are so many good deals that it's addicting! My 88 year-old great-aunt fell and broke her leg last week and had to have surgery (The same surgeon who operated on my son's broken leg 3 weeks earlier. We are providing way too much service for this doctor!) and has spent several days in the hospital. She has a lot of memory problems so we are staying close and spending many hours there. She is a tiny little thing but she's a fighter and is improving and so is my son. I thought I would get in lots of reading time at the hospital but that hasn't really happened. I hope you all had a terrific week, got lots of goodies and found plenty of reading time! And please be careful so you don't fall and break any bones yourself!!
Lost Days - free Amazon ebook
Hollowland - free Amazon ebook










Samantha Moon: Four Novels -99c/set B&N ebooks
Happy Hour Of The Damned - Paperback Swap
Full Dark, No Stars - 50c at library